“Oh, yeah, ‘Kayla’s Song.’” The bartender frowned at Kayla and she remembered he’d overheard her telling the lawyer that this was her first date with “Bob.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the lawyer staring.
Busted. “It’s okay, that’s me.” She held up her left hand and realized it was bare. “I took my wedding ring off to”—play sexy stranger games—“because I have, um…eczema.”
“Both of you have eczema?” said the blond waitress who’d tried flirt with Jared. She gave the bartender an order slip. “Her name is Betty and Bob—” she drew air quotes “—removed his wedding ring, too.”
Squealer.
Suddenly, Kayla was being stabbed to death by several pairs of disapproving eyes. “We are married. Look, I’ll show you my driver’s license.”
The bartender plonked the Guinness in front of her. “Hey, no judgment from me. Whoever he’s with is great for business.”
Kayla stopped foraging in her bag for her driver’s license. “That’s good to hear. I’ll send him with our kids next time. They’re four and eleven months.”
Dropping a small bill, she grabbed the drinks off the bar and headed toward their table. Jared was standing, probably to avoid having women piling on his lap for the selfies. It had happened, she’d witnessed it. Smiled through it.
She stopped for a gulp of mulled wine.
Veil askance, the soon-to-be-bride, was hanging off him, clearly on the disorderly side of drunk.
“Okay, here’s my date,” he said, gently freeing himself. “Great to meet you all, and have a wonderful wedding, Paula.”
“But this is the best part.” Paula grabbed his arm again. “You know how there’s this thing where you get a celebrity free pass from your guy to fuck your crush. Well, you’re mine. Can you believe it? And I’m still single. It’s like we’re meant to be.”
The other girls nodded as though that made perfect sense, all except the sober driver, who shot Kayla an embarrassed glance.
Jared disentangled again. “I’m married,” he said firmly and all at once, Kayla was back in Edinburgh.
Her lungs constricted. It was suddenly difficult to get air. In her mind’s eye she saw the French journalist kiss him, and Jared extricate himself—“I’m married”—unaware of Kayla watching across the road. Her relief became dread when she saw his sexual speculation as he watched Simone walk away. His gaze collided with Kayla’s, and a flash of guilt confirmed it.
He’d laughed off the attraction and that frightened her most, because it meant Jared didn’t feel in control of the changes in himself either.
It was the last straw. She’d booked flights home for her and the kids. Before we hurt each other more than we can fix.
At the airport, Jared had shown her a tattoo on his shoulder, new and still red and swollen. The kids’ names and hers. “You,” he’d said. “Always and only you.” And Kayla had clung to the gesture with the same desperation, she suspected, that had driven Jared to make it.
He loves me, she told herself now. He committed to me. And mostly believed it.
“Yeah, but celebrity free pass,” the bride-to-be repeated doggedly. “It means, I can, like, do it with you.”
“I can’t do it with you,” Jared said. “My wife and I don’t have that arrangement. Here she is now.”
Far from being embarrassed, Paula looked at Kayla and pouted like a child. “You can’t have a man like this and not share him. That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” Kayla put the drinks on a nearby table because her hands had started shaking. “You know what isn’t fair, Paula? Your sense of entitlement. You think a bridal veil gives you some kind of pass to grope any guy that catches your eye?”
“Lighten up, it’s just a bit of fun,” one of her bridal party muttered.
“Yeah?” Kayla’s anger exploded, all sound and fury after months of being repressed. “If any of you were getting this kind of attention from a group of drunken males, would you still call it fun? Or would you call it sexual harassment?”
“I think you’ve made your point, honey,” Jared said quietly, holding out a hand to her. Kayla ignored the call to sanity.
“Oh, I haven’t even started.” Some part of her brain screamed, Listen to him, but her rage sent up sparks when she tried to apply the brakes. She could only barrel along the train tracks and who cared if the bridge was out?